It’s not every television series that concludes its first season with references to a minor-key classic Francis Ford Coppola film, Randian economics, and the punk band Titus Andronicus, but Showtime’s Billions is a breed apart—a complex drama about ego and obsession filtered through the world of New York high finance. Dubbed by the New York Times as a “12-round, bare-knuckled brawl fought by men with manicured hands,” the series, about to enter its second season, centers on U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades’s (Paul Giamatti) zealous pursuit of ridiculously wealthy financier Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), and on Chuck’s wife Wendy (Maggie Siff), who is caught in the middle.